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Easter 6B
May 9, 2021
John 15:9-17
INTRODUCTION
As we near the end of the Easter season and move toward the season of Pentecost, we start to see a shift, as we begin thinking about what comes after this Easter joy. We’ll hear about the Holy Spirit today, and the role of that Spirit in equipping us to be followers of the risen Christ. And we’ll hear a whole lot today about love.
Today’s Gospel reading directly follows what we heard last week. So to set the scene: we are back at Maundy Thursday, with Jesus and the disciples as he bids his friends farewell. He has washed their feet and given them “a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” which he will reiterate in today’s reading. And immediately before this chunk we’ll hear, Jesus has called himself the true vine, imploring these friends to abide in him as he abides in them. Today we will go deeper into that image – last week Jesus said that we will bear fruit when we abide in him, and today he will talk about what that fruit is. (Spoiler: it is love!)
Jesus will use the word “friend” today. As you listen, think about what is needed to have such a close relationship with someone, and how love in those close relationships is expressed. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from our Risen Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Love, love, love. That’s what it’s all about. For God loves us we love each other: father, mother, sister, brother. Everybody sing and shout! ‘Cuz that’s what it’s all about. It’s about love, love love. It’s about love, love, love.
Yup, that is what it’s all about, for Christians. For everyone, I hope, but especially for Christians, love is the beginning, middle and end of our faith.
But I was thinking this week, Christians spend a lot of time talking about love of neighbor, love of the stranger, even love of people who might be difficult to love, who are “other” from us or disagree with us. And that’s all really important. But I have heard few sermons, and preached even fewer, about love of our those who are closest to us. Maybe it’s because we just assume those are the easy people to love – of course we love our families, right? Well, actually, that’s a ridiculous assumption to make. Just look at the divorce rate, which was already high and is only climbing higher after a year of people being cooped up together without their usual outlets and under increased stress. Look at the number of resources and professionals who deal with family conflict – solving it in the moment, or healing from it after, or dealing with the practical consequences. And even aside from the more extreme cases, who among us is never frustrated by their family members at times? In fact, it would seem we need to offer more, not less, faith-driven guidance for managing these closest, most intimate relationships in our lives!
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus calls the disciples his friends. For Jesus, this is about as intimate a relationship as it gets, aside from his relationship with his Father. He didn’t have a spouse or kids, so his friends were his family. So what can we glean from Jesus’ words here about how to love those who are our most intimate relationships – spouse, parent, child, or friend?
Reading this snippet of Jesus’ farewell discourse, there are a few phrases that stick out to me: “abide in my love,” “your joy may be complete,” and of course, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” I’m going to start with that last one. Often, our love for our families can feel like “laying our lives down” for them, right? Parents who quit their jobs to be a stay-at-home parent, or who would throw themselves in front of any potential harm to their child. Adults who take their aging parents into their home to care for them, or take on managing all their affairs as their parents’ abilities decrease.
But what about the more mundane ways, the daily ways, we give up our lives for one another? I have been thinking about this lately in terms of the Five Love Languages.[1] Perhaps you are familiar with this concept, but in case you aren’t, here is the gist: there are at least five different ways that people give and receive love, and each of us gravitates toward one or maybe two. That is, we truly feel loved when we receive love in one of these five ways: quality time together, words of affirmation or encouragement, receiving gifts, physical touch, or acts of service. Now just as I can tell you all day long that I love you in Swahili, but it won’t mean anything to you unless you speak Swahili, so it is with love languages: even if you know I’m saying I love you, you won’t truly receive that love unless I give it to you in the language by which you best receive it. When we receive love in our language, our love tank fills up, and we are energized to love others. We are drawn closer together. When we don’t, our love tank runs empty, and it becomes very difficult to love anyone else. In fact, we may even become resentful that our own efforts to love are not received by our important people, and we find we don’t even want to try to love them anymore. What’s the point? It doesn’t work anyway! Everyone is on edge or ignores one another, the space between grows wider, and eventually, people seek to have their love needs filled elsewhere, whether from another person, or from a substance, or from more time at work… you get the idea.
So, what does this have to do with laying down our lives for one another? Well say, for example, that you and your spouse have different love languages – chances are good that you do. Maybe one person’s love language is something that is in fact very difficult or unnatural for the other person – like, a wife needs quality time, but her spouse works 70 hours a week at an important job, and comes home too exhausted to give any attention to anyone. The spouse buys the wife many gifts to make up for the lack of time together, but that is not how the wife receives love, and in fact it only frustrates her further because more things makes for more for more work for her. She needs quality time to know she is loved. In order truly to love the wife, the spouse needs to lay down the part of their life that prevents quality time from happening – perhaps getting a different job, or prioritizing time differently, maybe even in a way that doesn’t seem natural, in order to make sure that the wife is, indeed, receiving the love being offered. Conversely, the wife, who has been keeping house as her way of loving her spouse, may need to consider getting her spouse a gift instead (which is clearly the spouse’s preferred way of loving), even though she doesn’t want any more stuff around the house, because that is what will make her spouse feel loved – and who knows, it may even incentivize the spouse to prioritize that quality time! When our love tanks are full, we are compelled to love another, even in ways that are difficult.
The example I used was a couple, but this can easily be extended to any of our close relationships: we cannot only love one another in the ways that seem natural to us. We must be willing to lay down our own ways, our own egos, our own expectations, in order to love one another in the ways that will truly make our closest people experience our love, selflessly offered. This is Jesus’ commandment, that we lay down our lives and love one another.
This can be a joyful process – as Jesus says, we abide in love in order that “[our] joy may be complete.” The effort itself of loving those closest to us can soften our hearts, melt away the resentment, and help us to feel joy once again in what had become monotonous and discouraging. Real love, given and received, does make joy complete. But it can also be terribly difficult. It is sometimes a choice each day to love one another, to continually lay down our lives and our egos and our expectations, to choose to love our spouse, parent, or child, even though it is difficult for you to love in the way they need to be loved.
But I got news for you: you, my friends, are also difficult to love, and yet God has finds a way to love you. No matter what your love language is, God has got you covered:
Words of affirmation: God tells us repeatedly through scripture that we are beloved, that we were created good, that we are enough. You are worthy of love.
Physical touch: at our baptism, water was trickled on our brow and a cross traced on our forehead. Christ’s own body and blood are given to us and for us. God gave us these sacraments so that we might receive God’s physical touch.
Receiving gifts: God has given us grace upon grace! As Luther writes, “God has given me and still preserves my body and soul: eyes, ears, and all limbs and senses; reason and all mental faculties.” Every day is laden with gifts.
Quality time: at Christmas comes the gift of Emmanuel, “God-with-us,” all the time. When Jesus left the earth, the Holy Spirit came, to continue being God’s presence with us. God has prioritized being with us, in every breath.
And finally, acts of service: Of course, Jesus has done the ultimate act of service, literally laying down his life for us so that we would have life and have it abundantly. Jesus lives and dies and lives again in order to serve us.
You see, God has loved us in all the ways we need love. When we “abide in God’s love,” as Jesus says, our tanks are full – full enough to risk putting our own selves aside for the sake of loving those close to us, without expectations. Jesus’ love is not so much our role-model (for we cannot love as perfectly as he does), but rather, our source and strength to selflessly love in the way that is needed, even if it is hard for us. In this way, we live not for love, but from love. We abide in love, we drink our fill of Christ, finding our strength there, and then spill over to love and bless the world. This pattern is our beginning and our end.
On this day when we think especially about those close family relationships, I pray that we will drink deeply of that source, so that we might love those closest to us with the best of what Christ’s own life-giving love has to offer, and so that we would, through our relationships experience Christ’s love concretely. May we abide in that love, never doubting it, and always, continuously, being filled by it.
Let us pray… God, our Friend, you have given us family and friends with whom we can share the abundant, joyful, and life-giving love you shower upon us. Thank for the ways we can experience your love, as givers and receivers, in these important relationships. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] I have since learned that many of our LGBTQ siblings have not seen themselves reflected in the 5 Love Languages. If this is the case also for you, or if you want a more expansive and LGBTQ-friendly resource, I suggest looking into Speaking from the Heart: 18 Languages for Modern Love.
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